Lesson 11

The Future of the English

J . B. Priestley

Aims:

1) Improving students’ ability to read between lines and understand the text properly;

2)  Cultivating students’ ability to make a creative reading;

3) Enhancing students’ ability to appreciate the text from different perspectives

Aims

4) Helping students to understand some difficult words and expressions;

5) Helping students to understanding rhetorical devices;

6) Encouraging students to voice their own viewpoint fluently and accurately.

Teaching Contents

I. Background Knowledge

II. Exposition and Argument

III. Detailed Study of The Essay

IV. Organization Pattern

V. Style and Language Features

Time Allocation:

1) Background knowledge (15 min.) 2) Detailed study of the text (180 min.) 3) Structure analysis (15 min.) 4) Language appreciation (15 min.) 5) Free talk (30 min)

Exposition and Argument

1) Type of literature: part exposition and part persuasion or argument

http://teachnetlab.org/santab/jeff/sbargue_index.html

http://homepages.iol.ie/~laoistec/LENGLISH/lpers.html

Difference between exposition and argument

Difference between persuasion and argument

Honest persuasion and dishonest persuasion Formal argument and informal argument

Background Knowledge

1) About the Author and His Works 1)   A brief introduction to the author,

Priestley: www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jpriestley.htm

2)     Admass The whole system of an increasing productivity,

plus inflation, plus a rising standard of material living, plus high-pressure advertising and salesmanship, plus mass communications, plus cultural democracy and the creation of the mass mind, the mass man the part of society that can be influenced by advertising or publicity

Detailed Study of the Essay

Pre-class work: 1. What do you think the author is going to focus

on: the future of the English as an international language, the future of the English as a nation or the future of the English people?

2. You are supposed to figure out the type of the essay from the title. It’s an imaginary fiction forecasting the future of the English or not?

3. What do you think the future of your own country and people would be like?

The English are Different

1. The dominant intention or the controversial topic of his argument is stated early in paragraph one in one unambiguous sentence: “ The English are different”.

1) The English can soon feel bored and that’s why they gamble and booze so much and enjoy any dramatic change in public life.

2)  The English have a sense of community, decent fellow feeling, fairness.

3)  The English are at heart and at root an imaginative people immediately responsive to any suggestion of drama in their lives.

4)   It is instinctive feeling and not rational thought that shapes and colours actual events in England.

5) The English do not feel at home in the contemporary world, representing the accelerated development of our whole age. They are suspicious of largeness, severe efficiency and admass.

6) The English are also deeply suspicious of change for change’s sake.

The Future of the English Hangs on The Future of the English hangs on

1) The final result of a battle between Admass and Englishness.

The striking contrast between admass and Englishness to show how inevitable the battle is.

Admass 1. Already conquered

most of the western world

2.receive vast subsidies of dollars, francs, Deutschmarks and the rest for public relations and advertising campaigns

Englishness1.ailing and

impoverished2.in no position to

receive vast subsidies of dollars,francs, Deutschmarks and the rest for public relations and advertising campaigns

3.offers more and more things for more and more money, creates the so-called “Good Life”

4.operates in the outer visible world

5.a poster in full colour

3. offers states of mind in place of that rich variety of thins

4.belong to the invisible inner world

5. a poor shadowy show, a faint pencil sketch

The conflict between Admass and Englishness.

Admass: What is central to Admass is the production and

consumption of goods. Dissatisfaction is embedded in Admass Ruthless competitiveness Take man only as a producer and consumer Dependence upon dissatisfaction, greed and envy

Englishness: With its relation to the unconscious Dependence upon instinct and intuition Adherence to the past and deep long roots Not hostile to change and deeply

suspicious of change for change’s sake Rejecting being committed to some

inevitable mechanical progress

While Englishness can still fight on, Admass could be winning.

Reason: Not all the English hold fast to Englishness Some important and influential men carefully train

themselves out of it A horde of others, shallow and foolish, wander away

form it The spirits of age is working for Admass Most of what we read and what we hear is working

for Admass Inflation proved that we need more and not less

Admass

2) The Future of the English rests upon the decision made by English workers together with the people on the management side who will have to put an end to the conflict between Admass and Englishness.

3) The Future of the English hangs upon men and women who are strong-minded enough to hold the Englishness and reject Admass

4) The Future of the English depends upon the quieter young, who under the influence of one or two of those professional men and women, far-sighted enough to think what life would be like in the future.

5) The Future of the English can not depends on the SLOOPY PEOPLE

Boredom is a MENACE

. Heavily industrially society

↓ offer boring work shatter slow rhythms, traditional skills, closely

knit communities of rural societies crowd and excite people by promises that cannot

be kept ↓ Boredom

Boredom

↓

idiot vandalism, frustration, ferocious robbery with violence, vicious criminality

English is Still With Us

4.English is still with us. But it needs reinforcement, extra nourishment.

1) On a hidden level, there remains of a characteristically English sense of community, decent fellow feeling, fairness.

2) Englishness cannot be fed with the east wind of a narrow rationality, the latest figures of profit and loss, a constant appeal to self-interest.

3) English are at heart and at root an imaginative people immediately responsive to any suggestion of drama in their lives.

Question: “And this is true, whether they are wearing

bowler hats or ungovernable mops of hair.” The rhetorical device used in this sentence is

__________. “bowler hats” is standing for ___________. “ungovernable mops of hair” is standing for

___________.

The writer’s voice To face the future properly they need both a

direction and a treat life of the heart. A rather poorer and harder way of life will not defeat them so long as it is not harder and poorer in spirit, so long as it still refuses to reject Englishness- for so many centuries the secret of the islanders oddity and irrationality, their many weaknesses, their creative strength.

Organization Pattern

1) The thesis stated in the title of the essay 2) The structural organization of this essay: loose 3) A quite informal piece of argument which

appeals more to the emotion of his English readers 4) Weakness:   insufficient evidence to support the

writer’s position, and his reasoning on some points not logically sound

Style and Language Features

1) Smooth and polished 2) Readable and informal 3) It is the instinctive and intuitive

feelings not rational reasoning that shape and colors the style of the essay.

4) Use of various rhetorical deviceshttp://www.megabrands.com/carroll/faq3.htmlto

Metaphor

Simile

Ellipsis

Transferred epithet

Metonymy

Euphemism

Special Difficulties

1) Identifying and understanding British English in this essay

2) Understanding some colloquialism 3)  Paraphrasing some sentences 4)  Identifying figures of speech 5)  Understanding some important terms